By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

BOISE, Idaho – Republican legislators and teacher union leaders are trading in their bitter political disagreements for happy talk and promises of bipartisanship as they attempt to find common ground about how to improve Idaho’s education system.

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The newfound spirit of cooperation comes the day after Idaho voters overwhelmingly repealed three “Students Come First” education reform laws. The reforms were among the most far-reaching in the nation, addressing everything from curtailing collective bargaining powers for school employees to putting laptops into the hands of every high school student and teacher in the state.

Gov. Butch Otter, a Republican, said lawmakers and education “stakeholders” need to come together and review the newly extinct reforms one by one, to find what is salvageable.

“I do think what we need to do is take each … idea of reform and sit down and say, ‘What did you like about it? What didn’t you like about it? If you had a chance to change it, how would you change it?’ And those things that we can agree on … (are) what we ought to go forward with,” the chastened Otter said, according to The Spokesman-Review.

Republican state Senator John Goedde, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, is wary of Otter’s new approach.

“If the union is sincere in looking at reform, I think they need to be included,” Goedde told the Spokesman-Review. “But if it’s going to be ‘not only no but hell no,’ which has kind of been their prior approach to this, then it’s a futile effort to include them.”

If Otter’s “inclusive” approach to education reform prevails, the results could be a predictable and unfortunate mix of increased K-12 spending and nominal accountability measures for teachers. In other words there might be no reform at all.

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The meaningful reforms – ending teacher seniority protections, restricting collective bargaining privileges and allowing merit pay – will end up in the dust bin.

On Wednesday, Idaho Education Association President Penni Cyr echoed Otter’s call for conciliation and urged lawmakers to meet union leaders “at the table.”

“We believe that together we can be a model of reform for the nation,” Cyr said, according to the news site.

Considering how a number of state teacher unions came roaring back life on Election Day, the idea that Idaho’s “kumbaya” approach might become a model for education reform across the nation is exactly what we’re afraid of.